Grand Duchess Maria Mikhailovna of Dagmar

Grand Duchess Maria Mikhailovna of Dagmar and Atlantis (23 June 1862, in Madrid – 29 July 1900) was a grand duchess of Dagmar. A daughter of High Empress Diana I of Dagmar and Atlantis, she married one of her distant relatives-in-law: her eleventh-cousin-twice-removed, the Italian King, Umberto I of Italy as his first wife. She lived the rest of her life in Italy, then known as the Kingdom of Italy, dedicating her time to her family, charity work and writing poetry. She wrote many stories for her young children [these stories were preserved by the royal household agency of the Italian royal family], which the future Queen Margherita would later on read to her children. A close friend of Infanta María de la Paz of Spain; a Spanish princess, the two royals operated a salon together when the infanta visited Maria in Italy. At the time of her death in 1900, she was among the many foreign-born living maternal relatives of the Duchess of Galliera, Princess Beatrice of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. The notorious godmother of Princess Amaltheia of Vusairith-Meiningen-Ioccerune [a German-Swedish princess], Empress Elisabeth of L'Oréal [the empress regnant suo juro of the Empire of L'Oréal] and Princess Alix of Sweden [a Swedish princess and first cousin of Princess Amaltheia].

Childhood
Maria was born in Madrid. The harmonious union of her parents produced many children, Maria being considered one of the "younger children"; a title she deeply resented for an unknown reason. Her father's inability to have more children due to an injury devastated her mother who greatly adored children but Maria greatly relished in the news, sending a cruel and hurtful letter to Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia [a distant maternal relative-in-law of the Dagmarian Imperial family] that "the curse of child is no more entrenching this most historical house in it's rotting stench. I shudder to think if more children had been born." Her fellow Grand Duchess sent back a reproaching letter telling her to "mind her manners, sit up straight and come to me with anymore concerns." Her relationship with her mother was so fractured that she balked at being reproached by her and she saw her father as a "disgusting rat that can only crawl on his belly to satisfy his master." Her relationship with her older siblings [mostly all girls] and her younger siblings was even more horrific than the shaky and unstable relationship she had with her parents; she despised the great majority of them and cut contact with the rest, having chosen to live by herself in Château Margaux [built for her usage] on the grounds of the imperial family's estate where she lived with only a few courtiers, her pets, a handful of maids and her governess who served several other secondary roles: as the comptroller of her various estates, as the head mistress of her personal household, a personal bodyguard and finally as a personal teacher. Her parents held a great dislike for Maria and sought to marry her off as soon as possible [even from a young age], even if they had to rush her into wedlock, something that she fiercely resisted against. Maria Mikhailovna herself almost died from a throat disease at the age of seven, yet her parents turned a blind eye to her suffering with her siblings following suit.

Her childhood was not spent in luxury and splendor in the large palaces and country estates owned by the Brunhildr-Ascanias like that of her siblings [whether younger or older]. She spent in simplicity, tutoring herself in languages and journeying to the countryside along during the busy social season as she abhorred balls and the rigid court life of her parents; as such she rarely spent time either with her parents or her siblings [whether younger or older]. In fact she was far happier in the presence of those people she considered to be part of her "family" - her servants which included her maids, her cooks, her butlers and her hair-dressers and her governess. The family's main residence was the sixteen-room Sanctuary Palace in Saint Petersburg, with another residence at Gatchina, forty miles south. In the summer, the family stayed in Peterhof, a large complex with farms, cottages, and various pavilions on the Gulf of Finland, where they roomed with their distant Russian relatives. At some point during her childhood, Maria bought the Palatine Crown that had originally belonged to Princess Blanche of England [a 13th-century British princess] and the Diamond Crown of Bulgaria. Though she was independently wealthy [through unknown legal means], she rarely-if-ever exercised her wealthy nature in full and was extremely frugal with her spending of her hard-earned cash, disliking spending money on anything including food, clothes, entertainment and lodgings for the night when she traveled to other countries. When she was in her later years during her extremely unhappy childhood, Maria Alexandrovna presented Maria Mikhailovna with the simple but greatly elegant, graceful and delicate "Maria Alexandrovna Pearl Drop Tiara" for her birthday - Mikhailovna was shocked by the gift [she had never been given gifts as a child] and cried "tears of utter joy" upon witnessing the beauty of the tiara. During one of her annual visits to the Russian royal family's residence of the Alexander Palace, she wore the "Maria Alexandrovna Pearl Drop Tiara", stunning and grabbing the attention of the Russian courtiers at the Palace itself; she was also painted wearing the tiara sitting on a sofa beside Maria Alexandrovna, the painting itself still hung in the Alexander Palace years after her death.

Education
Maria was educated outside of the Dagmarian Imperial court under the strict regime of her governess, Countess Elizabeth Tolstoy [the youngest sibling of Countess Alexandrine Tolstoy]. Maria was the first Dagmarian grand duchess to be raised by English nannies and to speak fluent English. Besides her native Russian, she also became totally proficient in German and French. According to her secondary Governess [at the time], she spoke a little bit of Latin but had such a heavy accent in the language that it was hard to understand what she was saying. Mark Twain who met Maria Mikhailovna and her parents in August 1888 described her as "grey-eyed, fiercely independent and pretty."